Charlotte O'Brien

@cobrien.bsky.social

2300 Followers 1192 Following

Professor of Law, University of York (she/her). Social security; EU law; discrimination; migration; social justice.

Quotes from peer reviews of the proposal: I think it is very powerful the way Charlotte has weaved a thread between the different ways xenophobia has been used that build on each other to create a cumulative effect of division and discrimination across society. She has such a wealth of experience Charlotte has an excellent reputation across academia and policy, as well as years of experience in advice-led research and public engagement. She writes clearly and accessibly and will be a fabulous advocate for the book. Charlotte O’Brien has produced excellent academic work on these issues and is entirely qualified to write this book a distinctive intellectual contribution/framework and a strong public-facing rationale. an imaginative, interesting and important proposal that would provide some real intellectual heft in an otherwise rather underpowered field of thinking and campaigning.
Quotes from peer reviewers for the book proposal: This is well put together and definitely leaves me wanting to read the full book which I think will be both gripping and challenging. The writing style is perfect, clear for a general audience, but also engaging to practitioners a project of deep social and political significance. This is a very strong proposal – intellectually ambitious, empirically grounded, provocative, timely. It is also very well written There really isn’t anything quite like this. It is groundbreaking.
Article entitled 'Bonfires and Brexterity: what's next for women?' with the first few paras of text: We could have quite a serious fight coming up. Whatever comes next, women’s voices should not be so resoundingly drowned out as they were in the Referendum campaign. Women’s rights need to be articulated starkly, bluntly, and loudly, since they were inaudible in the male echo chamber of pre-referendum debates. According to Lord Ashcroft’s Referendum poll, based on 12 369 people, the leave/remain split between female voters was exactly the same as that for male voters – 52/48. That figure, like the preceding debates, does not reflect the gendered nature of Brexit. Brexit raises the prospect of a ‘bonfire of rights’. A number of those in the Leave camp have made their distaste for gender equality provisions abundantly clear… (Leave’s) Boris Johnson announced that he would scrap the entire social chapter of the EU. In terms of what comes next, Brexit is a feminist issue. During the debates, concerns over workplace rights were too often dismissed with a reference to the UK’s legislative track record, suggesting that we were doing very nicely without Europe, thank you. But this argument is rather shallow and misleading. In law, detail is paramount. Yes, the UK stumped up its own Equal Pay Act. But it did not cover things like pension rights – it was up to the European Court of Justice to find that part time workers, more likely to be women, should be entitled to join occupational pension schemes. And it was the ECJ that found that women were entitled to equal pay for work of equal value when no job evaluation study had been done. Yes, the UK created its own Sex Discrimination Act, but it was the ECJ that found that no sick-man comparator was required, contrary to UK law. And it was the ECJ that found that women should not be deprived of their annual leave while on maternity leave... (truncated due to alt text limit)
Excerpt of the UKSC Jwanczuk judgment: It seems to us that it was not unreasonable in these circumstances for Parliament to conclude that it was better to have a certain, simple and consistent rule for all, which was quick to administer, and required almost no information to be provided by the bereaved, than to have an exception which would require the bereaved to provide detailed evidence of their deceased partner’s capacity to work at such a sensitive time, only for the chance of a benefit to which they may not be entitled.
A bunch of mortar boards, a scroll and some ribbons. Pic kindly supplied by the friendly e-bayer who sold them to me.
Image from the University of Coimbra website showing the title pf Charlotte’s talk: “Experiments in the law: advice-led ethnography, test cases, and citizen empowerment.” Plus the date and time (27 April, 5-6pm).
Lady Hale answering a question, seated in an armchair at the front of a large, filled lecture theatre at York Law School (audience out of sight apart from the tops of a few heads), with an excitable Charlotte O'Brien trying keep herself composed - a telltale hand gripping her chair a bit too tightly.
Cover page of: Aligning Policy and Reality: how to achieve the aims of sickness and disability benefits reform, with logos of Citizens Advice York, York Carers Centre, York Disability Rights Forum, York Foodbank, Healthwatch York York Human Rights City Network, Older Citizens Advocacy York, and the University of York
A screen shot of the first section of the accepted pre-print version of the article. Reads: Side-stepping international law on the sly: The secret severing of the EU Settlement Scheme from the Withdrawal Agreement Charlotte O’Brien and Alice Welsh INTRODUCTION The creation of the EU Settlement Scheme was a massive, unprecedented operation, to register millions of EU nationals and family members living in the UK, in a short space of time. The scheme implemented the UK’s obligations under the Withdrawal Agreements to protect rights after Brexit. However, in order to avoid making welfare payments to a small cohort of
Screenshot of a powerpoint slide, from a talk Alice and Charlotte gave on this exact subject, at the NAWRA conference in December 2025, hosted by the Welfare Benefit Unit, York. Slide shows a powerpoint stock image of a cake, and the EU Rights and Brexit Hub logo. The title is 'Extreme Cakeism'. and the text reads: * So, the EUSS is: constitutive for purposes of exclusion and immigration control * Declaratory for purposes of enabling discrimination* Scheme that gives some certainty to authorities* Scheme that gives NO certainty to individuals while misleading them! * New article in the Journal of Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Law all about this mess: “Side-stepping international law on the sly: The secret severing of the EU Settlement Scheme from the Withdrawal Agreement”
Grand Place in Brussels, lit up with green and purple lights
Screenshot of text from report, quoting O'Brien: Stakeholders noted that there may be reasons why applications might be slightly delayed. Certain groups, such as single parent families, may be more likely to be affected. “Dealing with the fallout of various traumas – more likely around the time of childbirth – is also likely to impair [individuals] ability to make timely claims. For vulnerable clients this means missing out on significant sums of money at crucial junctures. Child Benefit can be backdated for up to 3 months. The same approach to the Two Child Limit Payment would be humane, and allow for a small degree of flexibility at a difficult moment. It would also offer some recognition that a new benefit might not be widely known about."
Screenshot of text from SCoSS report: CPAG estimates that 3,000 families in Scotland are not entitled to any Universal Credit, because of the two-child limit.5 These families cannot access the top-up payment, as individuals must first be entitled to Universal Credit for the Scottish Government to apply its powers.
Front page of Scottish Commission on Social Security Scrutiny report on draft Regulations: The Two Child Limit Payment (Scotland) Regulations 2026
Cover of ‘He Said, She Said: Truth, Trauma and the Struggle for Justice in Family Court’ by Charlotte Proudman
Screenshot of the University of York's website: York City Guide. Pic of students on the City Walls, with York Minster in the background. Text includes excerpts from surveys claiming York to be the 6th most welcoming place on Earth, 2nd safest city in the UK, and 2nd friendliest place to live in the UK.
Image from the3million website, of the team acting to intervene in the Court of Appeal case of Fertre v Vale of White Horse District Council.
Windrush commemoration monument, by Basil Walsh: image from the House of Lords website
Screenshot of title and abstract of journal article. Title is 'The professional diversity deficit: the UK Supreme Court’s social security law blind spot'. Abstract is: 'It is no secret that the UK Supreme Court lacks demographic diversity. But there is very little commentary on a different diversity gap—that of professional experience. UK Supreme Court judges are typically drawn from lucrative areas of legal practice, creating a pronounced professional practice gap in the realm of social security law. None of the sitting Supreme Court judges have ever acted in a reported security case for social security claimants against the State. This creates a problem of perspective; would we really expect a panel of Goliath advocates to give David a fair hearing? This article highlights the hitherto under-explored evidence of a professional deficit on the Court, and argues that this cannot help but have an influence upon judicial perspectives. One such possible influence is the “alegalisation” of social security law—the treatment of it as not-law but as a matter of pure politics. Here, the article analyses how the line is drawn in key cases, in which it seems the Court feels responsible for defending some “pure law” human rights, while defending the courtroom from other human rights claims—those relating to social security. But poverty is a human rights issue, and human rights are (still) a matter of law. We need to bring social security expertise and claimant perspectives to the bench if we are to reassert the legal nature of social security rights.'
ESRC trophy